Ever After (Dirtshine Book 3)

by Roxie Noir

  “Françoise,” he says, as I turn and head for the door.

  I don’t answer.

  “Frankie,” he says, in the same tone of voice he’d use to talk about dog shit or raw sewage.

  The door shuts behind me. He doesn’t follow.

  I spend an hour just crying. I lay on the huge canopy bed, fit for a princess, and I sob it out. Angry, sad, furious, heartbroken, scared, uncertain — it’s all there, even as I can hear the faint sounds of people downstairs drinking, clinking their glasses together, laughing.

  But by the end of it, by the time I’m sitting upright, mascara and eyeliner smearing the pillows, hiccupping, I’m pretty sure of one thing.

  I can’t do this. I can’t marry him.

  I think maybe I should have realized it a long time ago. I wonder why I didn’t decline our second date after he ordered for me without asking at the first. Sure, at the time it seemed somehow gallant and chivalrous even if it was also kind of annoying, but I ignored it.

  Because he was charming, and British, and fun, and he showed me a life I’d never really imagined existed.

  But he hasn’t changed. People don’t change, not really, not who they are deep down inside underneath the façade they show to the outside world. Alistair’s always going to be Alistair, and everything’s always going to be my fault.

  I sit on the bed for a long time. Probably past when dinner ends, past when everyone retires to bed or the game room or whatever they’re doing right now. Bridget’s probably got her claws in him, dragging him off to somewhere else so she can ooh and ahh and fawn over his stupid, smug face.

  I’m not talking to him again. I can’t. There’s no point, so instead I sit at the desk in my suite and pull out the stationary set that’s in a drawer because of course the mansion has stationary and they provide it to all their guests.

  First, I write a stiffly polite, cordial note to his parents. I thank them for the stay, compliment their home, and apologize for my hasty departure. I’m sure they’ll be pissed anyway, but it’s not like I care too much at this point.

  Alistair’s letter I start and re-start five different times. I keep trying to explain myself, keep trying to use different words to explain why I’m writing him and not talking to him, why I chose to do things this way and not another.

  Finally, on the sixth draft, I remind myself: I can’t make him understand. I don’t think it matters at all what I say, he’ll see me as an American floozy who ran away instead of fixing herself.

  Alistair,

  I finally understand that this isn’t going to work. I’m heading back home to New York.

  Don’t worry about calling the venue and all the wedding vendors, I’ll do it.

  Sorry.

  Frankie

  I stare at it for a long time, but I can’t think of anything better to say. I know that I probably owe him some kind of explanation, a reason for just calling off the wedding, something, but I can’t bring myself to write it all down at the moment.

  Quickly, I take off the ring, shove it into the envelope with the letter. I leave them both on the desk, even though I know it’s cowardly, but I don’t want to tell anyone I’m leaving. I just want to be gone and deal with the consequences of it later.

  I lug two big suitcases down the stairs by myself, and by the time any of the household staff rush to my aid I’m already out the door and dragging them across the lawn to the garage. Rupert’s there, and though he can clearly tell I’ve been crying, he’s very professional about it as he helps me load them into the trunk of the Toyota.

  “Going on a holiday, Miss?” he asks.

  He gives me a significant look. I swallow, trying to hold back a fresh wave of tears.

  “Right,” I manage to get out.

  There’s a long, long pause. Rupert’s been nearly the only friend I’ve had in the house, and I’m suddenly aware that I might be doing him wrong right now.

  “I’ll leave it at the Brougham train station in the morning,” I whisper. “I’m sorry, Rupert.”

  He puts one gloved hand on my shoulder and gives it a squeeze.

  “My condolences, Miss Strauss,” he says, and he actually sounds warm and sincere.

  I breathe deep, afraid I’m going to start crying again, but I manage to hold it in.

  “Thanks,” I say. “And thanks for everything, Rupert. Good luck.”

  “Safe travels,” he says.

  Rupert retreats into his apartment.

  I drive out of the garage and away from the manor, down the long gravel driveway and to the main road. My heart is thumping the whole time, my knuckles white on the steering wheel.

  What if this is the wrong choice?

  What if this is the worst decision I’ve ever made?

  I could stop now, go back, throw away the notes and they’d never know.

  At the end of the long driveway, I brake. There are no cars coming down the road but I stay there, stopped, for a long time anyway.

  Suddenly, I don’t know what my future holds. Suddenly, instead of getting married in a couple months I’m single again, at the mercy of online dating and random hookups and meeting men at bars. It’s not too late to change my mind.

  I ease off the brake. Turn onto the road. Head toward town, and without realizing what I’m doing, I know where I’m going.

  There’s one person who makes me not want to leave this country right this second, one person who gives me second thoughts about catching the train to Manchester tonight.

  But when I push open the Hound’s Ears door to the jingle of bells, it’s not Liam who turns his head toward me. It’s some woman I’ve never seen before, clearly older, hair a color that’s either platinum blonde or gray — I honestly can’t tell.

  I stop short in the doorway, and she looks me up and down as a few of the regulars nod at me, go back to their beers. For a moment I’m thrown off-balance, because I’ve never come in here and not found him. I guess he gets days off, though.

  “Drink?” she asks as I walk toward the bar, unwinding my scarf from my neck. The men sitting at bar stools are clearly eavesdropping and trying to look like they’re not, and even Malcolm and Giles are quietly drinking and pretending to have a conversation instead of arguing over that damn church bell.

  “Actually, is Liam working tonight?” I ask, trying to sound as light as I can. Not like I’m about to say goodbye to him, probably forever.

  My heart squeezes at the thought. Through all of this, somehow that part hadn’t occurred to me. The last time ever part.

  Her expression doesn’t change as she checks me out, her eyes ice-blue in a broad face that, if I’m being honest, has seen better days.

  “Liam doesn’t work here any longer, love,” she finally says, her voice like a scratched record, leaning her elbows on the bar. “I’m afraid your future husband saw to that.”

  My stomach belly flops. I swallow.

  “Alistair?” I ask, my voice weak.

  She doesn’t say anything, doesn’t move a muscle. She just glares.

  I guess I’m right.

  “How?” I ask, though I’ve got a pretty good idea. The woman’s mouth just flattens into a line, and I can feel the flush working its way up my cheeks.

  It’s my fault. I did this. I came here, and I ruined the life of the only person I actually liked.

  “The Winsteads have quite a bit more money than anyone else for a hundred miles,” she says. “They’re rather good at getting their way.”

  For the second time in an hour, I think I’m going to cry, only this time I’m not mad. I’m fucking devastated: that Liam’s not here, that it’s my fault he’s not.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, shaking my head. One tear falls down my cheek, and I grind my teeth together, trying to force myself to stop crying. “I’m so sorry, do you have his number or anything? It’s just, I’m leaving really soon, and I wanted to say goodbye.”

  “I think you’ve done enough to that poor boy,” the woman says.

&
nbsp; “Sheila,” interjects Arthur, one of the men who’s somehow always there with a pint in front of him. “Come on.”

  She steps back and folds her arms across her chest.

  “I’ll give her his address if you don’t,” the man next to Arthur says.

  “Don’t get involved.”

  “Come on, the Little Lord’s not Frankie’s fault,” he says.

  “It’s her fault he had anything to do with Liam.”

  Arthur sighs, reaches into his pocket.

  “She didn’t know,” he says, and starts going through his phone.

  Sheila glares for another moment, then sighs, and starts writing something below the bar. After a long moment she tears a leaf from a notebook and shoves it across the bar.

  “There it is,” she says, and levels a finger at me. “Try not to fuck that poor boy up more than he’s already been fucked.”

  “Atta girl, Sheila,” Arthur says.

  The piece of paper has an address. I grab it before Sheila can change her mind.

  “Thank you!” I shout over my shoulder, already heading for the door.

  Sheila grumbles something, but I don’t hear it.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Liam

  I stand at the stone wall that surrounds the paddock next to my cottage and watch the train’s headlamp cutting through the faraway darkness, raising the bottle of wine to my lips.

  I think it’s a freight train. Coal probably, up here, if not then lumber or maybe sheep.

  “Could be you unlucky fuckers next,” I say to the sheep standing just on the other side of the wall.

  It’s dark, and they’re all lying down, likely asleep. One flicks an ear, but otherwise, nothing. I take another long pull and watch the train.

  I shouldn’t. I should be inside, going through the want ads on my phone, finding another job so I can make the rent next month. From a penthouse and a Maserati to this, surrounded by fields and desperately in need of a job, but I did it to myself.

  Jesus, did I do it to myself.

  Instead of going in, I watch the train. I think about that night, about the temptation to jump, fly, fall. It wasn’t a temptation to die, not exactly, so much as it was the desire just to find out. It helped that I didn’t care if I lived or died, but that was a muted feeling, background noise.

  No. I had to know, the same thing that’s always been my downfall. I smoked pot the first time at age fourteen because I had to know. I snorted heroin the first time because I had to know. Needing to know has led me down dark alleyways, into dangerous shanties, into the arms of women who’d have taken my soul if they could.

  I’ve smoked things handed to me by strangers who didn’t speak English, not that I’d have asked if I could have. I’ve poked needles into my veins without asking who used them last. I’ve drunk concoctions that could have been half blood, half piss, and half arsenic because I always wanted that next step down, that lower pool of darkness.

  That’s why Shelton’s been good to me. It’s got almost nothing to offer that I’m not already familiar with, nothing that piques my interest and makes my junkie-brain demand more. It’s good because I haven’t got any idea where to find the things that led to my downfall, since I clearly can’t be trusted to control myself.

  Well, until Frankie showed up. A fucking trial, tailor-made just for me, pure temptation in this sleepy village. A chance to resist something for once. A chance to exercise the least bit of self-control.

  And I did. Women were never my biggest problem — that was the heroin, obviously — but a few years ago, if I wanted, I’d have been fucking her against the wall in the restroom within twenty minutes. She could have been engaged, married, she could have been pregnant with a toddler in tow. It wouldn’t have mattered to me before.

  It did this time. I fucking did right this time, and look where it got me. I ought to have just kissed her at the gala, because at least I’d have done it and I’d know instead of watching a train in a field while being ignored by sheep.

  In two years there’s been one real spark in my life, and I don’t think I’ll get to see her again. My sudden dismissal from the pub sends one hell of a message, and it’s not a pleasant one.

  Just as the train’s lamp passes by and disappears, there’s another light on the horizon, out on the road. There’s not exactly much traffic out here, so I watch the car with mild interest as it winds slowly along the lane, tilting the bottle of wine up so I get the last drops.

  It slows, turns onto the unpaved road that leads to the farm house, two miles away.

  Stops right before my own brief driveway, like it’s lost. I tilt the bottle up again just in case there are a few more drops left, feeling it slide around in my brain like a river finding its course. I’ve got a dark feeling about this lost car, because the only reasons I can think of for someone coming out here who doesn’t know where they’re going are bad ones.

  I’m being evicted, for example. Or perhaps I’m being sued, perhaps Alistair has found some way to open a criminal case over Allen’s death and I’m now being formally charged.

  For all I know, he’s got ties to dangerous gangsters and they’re here to shoot me and feed my body to the sheep.

  The car moves again, turning toward my cottage, and the headlights sweep over the low stone structure, washing me briefly in the process. I push myself off the stone wall, dropping the bottle on the grass, and walk toward the car as it crawls uncertainly toward the house.

  Probably not murderous gangsters, at least.

  I come up beside the cottage to the headlights directly in my eyes. The car slows to a stop, and though I shade my face against the light, I still can’t see a bleeding thing.

  The door opens, and a black shape gets out. I’ve now drunk nearly a bottle of wine and a few shots of whiskey besides, probably more than I’ve drunk since the last time I watched the headlamp of a train travel through the darkness. Not that I can keep count too well.

  “Whatever you’re here about, you can fucking sod off as I’m not interested,” I call out.

  There’s a brief pause.

  “You sure?” Frankie’s voice calls.

  She flips the headlights off as she says it, and I’m left blinking in the sudden dark, ghosts of the light tracing across my field of vision. I walk up to the car, weaving slightly as I navigate the uneven ground. Frankie shuts the car door, shoving the keys in her jacket pocket.

  “Less sure now,” I say, sauntering up to her. “Depends on what you’re here about.”

  “Are you drunk?”

  “I’ve been drunker,” I say.

  “How drunk?”

  I come closer. Frankie doesn’t move away. Of course she doesn’t. I’ve lived long enough to know what interested and shouldn’t be looks like on a beautiful woman, and it’s written all over her face right now.

  “I can still get it up just fine if that’s what you’re here for,” I say. “Just say the word, Frankie. I’ve got another bottle of wine in the kitchen and if you want, it’s got your name on it.”

  “I thought you stopped getting drunk and making a fool of yourself,” she says softly, though her tone is more teasing than angry.

  “I thought you stopped driving out to see me after dark,” I say.

  “Who says I was driving to see you?”

  I step back and gesture broadly at the rest of the scene around us: fields, sheep, stone walls, my cottage, the deep night sky.

  “You just happened to show up for a freezing nighttime stroll, then?”

  “I meant before, at the pub.”

  I close my eyes briefly. The few parts of me still sober enough to reason are screaming at me to say anything else, to not speak my mind, to change the subject and let her get away with this.

  “There’s not a single living being in the north of England who thinks you came time after time for a pint of warm beer and the company of a dozen codgers who can barely string a sentence together free of grunts,” I say. “We both know yo
u came to see me. Giles and Malcolm know it. Harry knows it. Your fiancé knows it. The fucking queen knows it.”

  “He’s not my fiancé.”

  “I meant Alistair.”

  “Obviously.”

  I’m thrown for a moment, suddenly not sure what we’re talking about.

  “I’m misinformed, then?” I ask, because I can’t manage to shape my brain into any other questions right now.

  “I ended it,” she whispers.

  My heart soars.

  “I came to say goodbye. I’m going home,” Frankie finishes.

  Goodbye slams into me like a freight train, and I take a step back, suddenly breathless.

  “Right now?” I manage to ask.

  “Pretty much, yeah.”

  “Come have a drink first.”

  It’s not a request. It’s not a question.

  “I shouldn’t,” she says. ‘There’s a train leaving Brougham for Manchester in ninety minutes, and it’s dark and your roads are awful—”

  “Have a fucking drink with me, Frankie.”

  I turn and walk to the cottage, ten paces away. She’ll follow. She didn’t somehow find my address and drive all the way out here to say goodbye as we stand next to the car, and we both know it. I open the door, stand in the doorway, and turn to face her, leaning back, one hand in my pocket.

  She rolls her eyes. Crosses her arms.

  And walks toward me, through the doorway, into my two-room home.

  “One drink,” she says as she passes me.

  In my small kitchen, she slides her coat off and tosses it over the back of a chair, sitting down as I get the second bottle of wine from the cupboard and grab the corkscrew from where I left it on the counter, next to the empty bottle and the whiskey, still half-full.

  I can feel her looking at it. She may as well be announcing it through a megaphone.

  “I’m sorry Alistair got you fired,” she says suddenly.

  I pause, the corkscrew halfway into the bottle, before twisting again.

  “It’s not your fault,” I tell her.

  “If I hadn’t kept coming around he wouldn’t have done whatever he did, and you’d still have a job,” she points out.